Northampton Students to Participate in the National School Walkout at 10 a.m.

All American students have a First Amendment right to protest. The landmark Tinker v. Des Moines case settled that legal question. In it, the Supreme Court ruled students don’t “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Tomorrow morning, March 14th, students at Northampton High and the Middle school will be exercising their rights, and will participate in the the National School Walkout.

Comments

As an adult, I for one would like to know what exactly it is that these ”
children” are “protesting.”

As a noun, “protest” means “a statement or action expressing disapproval of or objection to something.”

So what exactly is the “something” these “children” are disapproving of?

The fact that in the tony, upscale community of Parkland, Florida in Broward County, Florida, they are running such a slipshod operation at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that they cannot keep the children safe down there?

As a verb, “protest” means to “express an objection to what someone has said or done,” or “declare (something) firmly and emphatically in response to an accusation.”

So what is it that was said or done that these “children” are “protesting?”

The fact that a Broward County school resource officer was a craven coward?

The fact that there seem to be some real serious problems down there in the paradise of Florida?

I listen to these “protests” on the radio news, and all I can hear is inarticulate screeching and what sound like a large pack of animals grunting over and over again.

Is that what these “children” are being taught today – that government is about who can screech louder than anyone else?

The other day, I heard some high school student in the northeast who was devastated by the fact that his school was closed on protest day by a blizzard, so the children could not be disobedient (refusing to obey rules or someone in authority) by walking out.

That particular student was vey big on the right of children in American society today to be disobedient.

When others are interviewed as to what it is they are protesting for, or against, the answers are all ,over the board, and seem to ccnter on the government giving them money and taking guns away from everyone in America because of some serious failures of authority in ritzy, upscale Parkland, Florida.

Who is teaching these “children” that they have a right to be disobedient?

Who is teaching these children that they have some kind of right to disrupt the lives of other people in this nation because the “children” do not like something?

What is all this screeching and inarticulate grunting supposed to accomplish?

Perhaps the Mirror could perform a public service for all of us in America by delving further into those questions.

Call it a walk out, a million negro march, a pussy hat festival or a liberal student walk out…..it means nothing…nothing will be done to further their agenda. It is like calling someone racist, As there are no consequences it is wasted breath.

So was Timothy McVeigh. Just because someone serves in a war does not make them smarter, more informed, more ethical, or better educated than anyone else. While those who served deserve our thanks and appreciation, let’s not make the mistake of wrapping them in cotton wool or accepting everything they say (no matter how ludicrous) as gospel.

The Mirror is, for the most part, a local newspaper. In my view, Paul Plante’s endless political rants put a real damper on the conversations that we need to have about issues on the Eastern Shore. Remember, the value of what we say is not determined by the amount of words we use. Mr. Plante’s long-winded writing reminds of that of a teenager who’s trying to make himself sound intelligent. And, like a teen, he often misuses the 25-cent words that he throws around.

Perhaps the Mirror could create a National Politics section where Mr. Plante and his bomb-throwing friends and opponents could hold forth to their hearts’ content, leaving the rest of the paper to people who are actually interested in finding solutions to our local problems.

I don’t hang out with bomb throwers, nor do I abide in any way bomb-throwers.

And I don’t use 25-cent words in here, Robert Muir.

I use the normal vocabulary I was taught when young.

If those words fly over your head, or are offensive to you because they at multi-syllablic, I feel sorry for you, but all the same, despite my compassion for you, I am not going to limit my vocabulary to suit you.

As to national politics, Robert Muir, what on earth do you think a National School Walkout is all about, if not national politics?

Perhaps you should take a better look at the content of the Cape Charles Mirror, Robert Muir.

It is hardly limited to what is going on in Cape Charles.

That is why it has readership from all over the United States of America, and likely foreign nations. as well, people who want a more unfiltered look at who the American people are than they are going to learn from the main stream rags or some reality show on TV.

You sound like the Liberal, Hillary/Obama supporter you are, therefore you are not worth the time or effort to try and help. Liberals and political correctness are the greatest enemies to this country, it’s people and their constitution. You people have shown the whole world your true colors since the last election. We’ve got your number.

I had no idea that the U.S. had nearly been invaded by “coolies.” It just goes to show how deep the media conspiracy runs. Kudos for digging out the truth. Informed nuggets like these are what give your opinions so much weight, I’m sure.

Or hey, maybe you just got the standard sub-standard education in vogue in America that leaves you more ignorant than you were before you went to school.

The “coolies” is a reference to the Chinese coming down in swarms and human waves across the Yalu River between Manchuria and Korea in the Korean War back in the 1950s.

They were also referred to disparagingly as “laundrymen.”

Ask the people who fought with the 2d Infantry Division or 25th Division or the 1st Cavalry Division or the Marines of the Chosen Few about the Chinese “coolies” in Korea.

On 14 February 1951, the 5th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division received word that the 2nd Infantry Division’s 23rd Infantry Regiment and a French Battalion were trapped at Chipyong-ni in what is now North Korea.

The Battle of Chipyong-ni has been called “the Gettysburg of the Korean War”, as it signified the high-water mark of the Chinese invasion.

Do you see that word “invasion” there, Robert Muir?

While it was not per se an invasion of American continental soil, by tradition, where the American flag flies, as it did at Chipyong-ni in Korea, is considered “American soil,” so yes, when Katherine James says the Coolies would have taken this country were it not for Vets, she is a lot closer to the truth and facts than you are.

A Communist offensive in Korea is a far cry from “the coolies would have taken this country were it not for Vets.” To suggest otherwise is to trade in the kind of alternative facts that have become such a worrying element of our decaying democracy. If you want to have an intelligent conversation, you cannot resort to such nonsense.

Someone who serves in a war, Robert Muir, may well be much smarter, more informed about what war is really like than someone who stayed home that day and only read about it, and because of that experience, yes, Robert Muir, they may in fact be much more ethical than those who stayed behind and watched from the sidelines, so in that sense, yes, Robert Muir, they are much better educated on the subject than anyone else.

And what of this, Robert Muir: “The Mirror is, for the most part, a local newspaper.”

“In my view, Paul Plante’s endless political rants put a real damper on the conversations that we need to have about issues on the Eastern Shore.”

end quotes

Do you realize, Robert Muir, how pitifully weak that makes you sound when you say that something I might say in here brings the processes of government and citizenship on the Eastern Shore of Virginia to a screeching halt, so that because of me, your problems down here are mounting fast?

How do you deal with all the outsiders who come here as tourists, then?

Or do you only let in those who agree with everything you say, so that they will keep their mouths shut so as to not makes waves down here?

As to issues that pertain only to people living on the Eastern Shore, like all your chicken houses down here and your people living in what sound like shacks with outhouses instead of indoor plumbing while subsisting on a steady diet of chicken, I keep myself out of those issues, because I don’t live here and don’t have a voice in your affairs when it comes to the living conditions on the Eastern Shore.

If people on the Eastern Shore of Virginia like chicken and prefer outhouses to indoor plumbing, frankly, Robert Muir, that is quite fine with me.

And wouldn’t it be so nice, Robert Muir, if in fact we could all go back in time to living in our own small communities without the fear of outsiders from some other place coming in to disrupt the flow of things?

I think deep down that is what you would like, to pull the shroud of time around the Eastern Shore of Virginia to have it stay mired in a past that you yourself can feel comfortable with, and really, wouldn’t we all, Robert Muir?

It reminds me of the verse in Chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu as translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English, to wit:

A small country like the Eastern Shore of Virginia has fewer people.

Though there are machines that can work ten to a hundred times faster
than man, they are not needed.

The people take death seriously and do not travel far.

Though they have boats and carriages, no one uses them.

Though they have armor and weapons, no one displays them.

Men return to the knotting of rope in place of writing.

Their food is plain and good, their clothes fine but simple,
their homes secure;

Actually, Robert Muir, my health is quite good as is my digestion and my mental health is quite excellent, as well.

I’m 72 years old, and I don’t take any meds, Robert Muir, and I certainly don’t have any need of Pepto-Bismol or Imodium, what ever on earth they may be for.

Your familiarity with them, however, indicates that you know quite a bit about both.

You should stop for a moment, Robert Muir, to ponder on the relati0nship between your poor attitude towards your fellow man and your dietary processes.

Improve your outlook, Robert Muir, and perhaps like me, you will be able to go through life drug-free, including that Pepto-Bismol and Imodium you are so familiar with.

Have you ever bothered to look at the label and see what is in that ****?

Google “side effects of Imodium” and this is what you will see:

Common Side Effects of Imodium:

•Dizziness.

•Drowsiness.

•Dry mouth.

•Vomiting.

•Constipation.

•Fatigue.

•Stomach pain, discomfort, or enlargement.

end quotes

Do you think I am really stupid enough to want that crap inside of me, Robert Muir, and to suffer those side effects?

No way, dude – you don’t get to be old and have good health by being stupid about how you get there, which is sound advice that I am going to leave for you to consider while you still have the window of opportunity open to ditch that **** and start living right.

And with all due respect to your intellectual superiority here, Robert Muir, but your comments about old people who had suffered a “major brain injury,” whatever that may be, sound more than a little condescending (having or showing a feeling of patronizing superiority) and chauvinistic (displaying excessive or prejudiced support for one’s own cause or group).

Do you think people who are 72 are senile or feeble-minded, Robert Muir, because of age?

In that case, how does that bode for your own future?

And what of this “major brain injury” that you speak of?

Are you stating or implying through the skillful use of innuendo (an allusive or oblique remark or hint, typically a suggestive or disparaging one) that people who suffer head injuries in combat in defense of this country and people like yourself are somehow “head cases” or mental deficients of some sort?

Are you aware, Robert Muir, that the human brain is capable of repairing itself through neural re-wiring, so that someone like myself who suffered two head wounds in combat in defense of your rights is not left as a mental vegetable as a result?

And have you ever considered, Robert Muir, that it is said of the whole-witted like yourself that you only utilize about 10 percent of your brain’s capacity, while in the case of a half-wit like myself who is using 100% of the half a brain I might have as a result of a “major brain injury,” that I am still actually far out ahead of the whole-witted person using only ten percent of their capacity?

Do not think for a second that the japs and the germans would not have taken this country by force had we not won WWII. We only won because of a generation of exceptional white (for the most part) soldiers, who were mostly racist and bullies (by today’s warped standards). Your words reek of Liberalism.

Your first post talked of “coolies.” Reading your second post, I see you probably meant “Japs” instead. We’ve got to pull together here to make sure we get our slurs accurate and consistent. When it comes time to send them all to the camps, we want to know who we’re rounding up, right?

With respect to your comment, Robert Muir, that “(W)e’ve got to pull together here to make sure we get our slurs accurate and consistent so that when it comes time to send them all to the camps, we want to know who we’re rounding up, right,” Hillary Clinton has already accomplished that task for us in this last presidential campaign with her lumping them all into one single “Basket of Deplorables” which greatly simplifies things for people like yourself in America today who might have trouble otherwise keeping track of all the various individual slurs that could be applied to them as individuals.

While we are on the subject of these school children protesting something, how many people recall these words from the Bill Maher Show on March 2, 2018:

“I mean this sincerely, I really do, to all the generations before us we sincerely accept your apology.”

“We appreciate that you are willing to let us rebuild the world that you f—ed up.”

end quotes

Those words, which many adults up this way find quite insulting, and rightfully so, were spoken by a 17-year old child named Cameron Kasky, a self-proclaimed “school shooting survivor” from Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, described in a Miami Herald article as composed, articulate and media savvy, who was a featured guest in a 10-minute segment on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” on March 2, 2018.

“We want Americans to stop being afraid of demanding our politicians to take action.”

“They work for us; we don’t work for them.”

“The March for Our Lives is us coming out and saying to our employees, “You guys suck at your job,” this same 17-year old school child Kasky blasted on the Maher Show.

You have to wonder who is writing this media-savvy child’s line for him here, as there are plenty of pandering politicians out there looking to milk this school shooting and these marches for all they are worth, starting with media-savvy New York State Governor and Progressive Democrat Young Andy Cuomo, who has a history of shamelessly using school children as political props, and who is angling to be our next president by courting the votes of these children who in 2 years will be able to vote by initiating them into his cult of adulation which is so necessary for someone in America today who aspires to the office of president as Young Andy does.

Just the other day, Young Andy stood in the middle of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, surrounded by student activists who had gathered for a school walkout to protest federal inaction on gun control.

According to his press releases, Young Andy marched and chanted with over one hundred students from the Leadership and Public Service High School, one of many nationwide protests taking place one month to the day after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people.

Students at Young Andy’s rally carried hand-crafted signs bearing slogans such as “fear has no place in our schools” and “f*** the president,” and shifted rapidly between a series of chants, which some said were led by Young Andy himself.

From the hand-crafted signs bearing slogans such as “f*** the president” at Young Andy’s rally in Manhattan the other day, we can see it has everything to do with manipulating these young minds to get them under Young Andy Cuomo’s spell.

And then, to show these children he is one with them, the day after Young Andy’s demonstration, Young Andy asked the New York State Education Commissioner, MaryEllen Elia, to use her authority to stop school administrators from disciplining students who took part in the demonstration.

Young Andy is playing these children like a fiddle for political gain, which would make this Cameron Kasky a prize catch for Young Cuomo to have in this camp, because when it comes to school shootings, as this Kasky said on the Bill Mahar Show, “We are the experts!”

And since they are the experts here on school shootings, what they should be focusing on, especially the ones from Marjory Stoneman Douglas like this Kasky, is exactly how it was that this tragedy was able to occur in their community, and their high school.

They were there, afterall.

They are the experts here.

So what they need to do for the nation as media savvy experts is to explain to us adults on some other forum than the Bill Mahar Show in this country how the world they live in, in tony, ritzy, upscale Parkland in Broward County, Florida, a “planned” community where things like this just are not supposed to happen, managed to produce a monster (UH-OH, did I just upset some liberal in here) who then took a semi-automatic rifle and used it to shoot up Marjory Stoneman Dou7glas High School.

How did that major-league ****-up occur?

What chain of failures of responsibility on how many levels resulted in this monster being able to enter Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with a rifle and extra magazines?

We want answers, Cameron Kasky, and we would like them sooner than later.

As to my generation apologizing to you for anything, starting with the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, get real here, child, because that simply is not going to happen.

It was not my generation that caused that massive ****-up in your high school down there in Parkland, Florida, known for its zoning laws, which are designed to protect the “park-like” character of the city.

My generation had nothing whatsoever to do with creating this monster, nor did the nation.

This is a Parkland, Florida problem, this major-league ****-up at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, so Cameron Kasky, when you have some answers for us as to how your community created this problem, the candid world would very much like to know.

For anyone who did not see that Bill Mahar show where the two callow youths from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in tony Parkland, Florida in Broward County were insulting the adults of the United States of America, while calling themselves “experts” on school shootings because they were cowering in a locked classroom while shots were being fired outside somewhere, until the cheap piece of crap the shooter was using jammed, the interview can be heard and seen in its entirety at this link:

According to the United States Department of Education, as of 2001, there were some 26,407 public secondary schools and 10,693 private secondary schools in the United States of America attended by over 13,369,000 students, so it is quite obvious that the media-savvy Cameron Kasky is feeding hype to the gullible Bill Maher, who stated he was more ignorant than these high school students, and he is blowing smoke up the rest of our *****.

“We’re millennials and we love complaining more than any other generation,” says David Hogg, which pretty much says it all, as far as I am concerned.

With respect to who these callow youths should be seeking an apology from, we have this from the Wall Street Journal article “Video shows Florida deputy outside high school as shooting unfolded” by Jon Kamp published: March 15, 2018, as follows:

A video released Thursday appears to show a sheriff’s deputy standing outside Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for several minutes while a gunman fired into classrooms inside.

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office, which distributed the footage after a judge ordered its release, said it depicted the actions of former Deputy Scot Peterson as the shooting unfolded.

Sheriff Scott Israel has said Peterson should have confronted accused shooter Nikolas Cruz in the building, while Peterson has defended himself by saying he properly took position for what he thought were shots being fired outside.

The footage shows a figure the sheriff’s office has identified as Peterson approaching Building 12, the scene of the shooting, about two minutes after the sheriff’s office says the shooting started.

The figure remains there for the nearly four additional minutes the sheriff’s office has said the shooting took place.

“The video speaks for itself,” the sheriff’s office said.

“After being suspended without pay, Peterson chose to resign and immediately retired rather than face possible termination.”

end quotes

As I have said before, this is not a national problem, nor is this a regional problem.

This is a Parkland, Florida problem, and a Broward County, Florida problem, and my generation sure as hell is not responsible for the Democrat-controlled Broward County Sheriff’s Office having a craven coward assigned to Marjory Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida to protect the students there.

(And yes, having two Purple Hearts and a Silver Star from Viet Nam, I myself have gone towards the sounds of the guns firing, and not popguns like an AR-15, either, but AK-47s, machine guns and RPGs, as did many 17 and 18 year olds in WWII, Korea, VEET NAM and all our other wars, so I am as much an expert at getting shot at as is them Cameron Kasky who was hiding in a classroom while the firing was going on).

So that buck stops down there in Broward County, Florida.

But actually, it doesn’t, does it, because these media-savvy children on the Bill Maher Show have deftly managed to shift the blame to all the adults in America these children think ****** up the world they live in, and the Second Amendment, which Bill Maher would like to see repealed, since people in other countries like North Korea or Russia do not have a similar right, while shifting the blame away from their own school administration and their community and their parents and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

While we are on this subject of these 17-year old children in America from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in upscale Parkland, Florida being experts on school shootings because they were hunkered down in a classroom while the shooting was going on, I would like to contrast their experience with that of a teen-aged American who is all but forgotten today in America today named Audie Murphy.

The Encyclopedia of World Biography has this to say about him:

Born near Kingston, Texas, Audie Murphy (1924-1971) won fame as the most decorated soldier in U.S. military history.

During World War II and for many years afterward, Audie Murphy personified heroism on the battlefield.

His death-defying exploits were the stuff of legend, but to many Americans Murphy is a virtual unknown.

As Don Graham observed in his biography of Murphy, “we prefer video fantasy-Rambo-a kind of MTV celebration of American machismo….”

“[But] Audie Murphy was the real thing….”

“And the real thing is always more interesting.”

Audie Leon Murphy, the seventh of twelve children of Emmett “Pat, ” a sharecropper, and Josie Murphy, was born June 20, 1924, in a Texas cotton field.

Leon, as Audie was known until he went into the army, had chores to do at an early age, and when he was five years old, he was hoeing and picking cotton alongside his parents and siblings.

There was no time for play and not much time for school, either. Murphy recalled years later, “It was a full-time job just existing.”

In 1939, at the age of fifteen, Murphy dropped out of school for good and left home to seek work that would help the family.

He held a series of low-paying odd jobs.

A war got Murphy out of Texas.

Less than seven months after his mother died, the United States entered World War II following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Like so many other eager young men, seventeen year old Murphy tried to enlist in the military.

But at only 5’5″ tall and 112 pounds, the baby-faced teenager (who looked even younger) was rejected by both the marines and the army because of his age.

He tried again after he turned eighteen.

The marines still weren’t interested, but on June 30, 1942, he was officially inducted into the army and immediately sent to boot camp for combat infantry training.

There he excelled at marksmanship and quickly developed into a well-disciplined soldier.

In late January 1943, Murphy shipped out to North Africa.

Assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division, he was sent to the island of Sicily on July 10.

It was there that he began to compile his remarkable service record.

Aggressive and audacious, yet levelheaded, Murphy proved to be the ideal soldier.

Murphy quickly discovered that war was not quite what he had expected it to be.

“Ten seconds after the first shot was fired at me by an enemy soldier, combat was no longer glamorous, ” he later observed.

“But it was important, because all of a sudden I wanted very much to stay alive.”

Fear was always beside him, and he could sometimes feel his insides twist into knots.

But as Murphy noted after the war, “Sometimes it takes more courage to get up and run than to stay.”

“You either just do it or you don’t.”

“I got so scared the first day in combat I just decided to go along with it.”

Murphy earned his first medal, the Bronze Star, in March of 1944 for singlehandedly knocking out a German tank.

Beginning August 15, 1944, the story of Murphy’s exploits becomes “simply incredible, ” to quote his biographer.

Murphy encountered a hill dotted with German machine-gun nests that were protecting a big gun aimed at the coast.

He headed up the hill alone, methodically destroying several of the machine-gun nests along the way.

Suddenly, his best friend in the unit appeared at his side and insisted on staying with him.

Then, as Murphy and his buddy engaged enemy troops in a gun battle, the Germans indicated they were ready to surrender.

Murphy was suspicious, but his friend stood up to acknowledge the gesture and was immediately gunned down.

In a burst of fury, Murphy killed the Germans who had shot his friend and continued on his rampage up the hill, taking out another machine-gun nest and eventually securing the area for the Allies.

For his actions, he won the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest U.S. Army medal for valor.

In eastern France during the fall of 1944, Murphy earned two Silver Stars.

The first was for saving his commanding officer.

His second was awarded for actions he took to destroy a well-camouflaged machine-gun and sniper outpost.

On January 26, 1945, Murphy’s courage under fire earned him the nation’s highest honor for personal bravery and self-sacrifice in combat, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Murphy and his men were ordered to take up a position and hold it.

Less than two dozen Americans protected by two tank destroyers then squared off against some 200 enemy soldiers backed up by six tanks.

In the opening minutes of the battle, Company B’s machine-gun squad was wiped out, one of its tank destroyers slid into a ditch and had to be abandoned, and the other tank destroyer was hit by artillery fire.

Murphy figured the end was near as he realized how outnumbered he and his men were.

Ordering his men to retreat, Murphy stayed and directed artillery fire into the area while emptying his gun at the advancing Germans.

He then spotted the burning tank destroyer about ten yards away and noticed that its machine gun appeared to be undamaged.

He ran over, jumped on the tank destroyer’s turret, and started firing the machine gun as he continued to direct the ongoing artillery barrage.

He kept up this attack on his own for at least thirty minutes and perhaps as long as an hour, killing or wounding some fifty enemy soldiers.

end quotes

And that story goes on and on.

Knowing of Audie Murphy as a young American, I was inspired by his bravery, considering he was just a kid at the time, like these callow youths calling themselves shooting survivors on the Bill Mahar Show.

If Audie Murphy had been at Stoneman Douglas High School as a resource officer when this shooter was there, would he have run away or cowered in a classroom?

Somehow, I just have to doubt it.

And I would suggest to these two callow youths from the Bill Maher Show that before they go around telling all the world how tough they have had it, that maybe they ought to study the life of a real hero like Audie Murphy before they run their mouths on the Bill Maher Show very much further about how they are experts at getting shot at, and how scary it was.

Maybe it will serve to raise their consciousnesses for them, especially as they tell the American people who came before them “I mean this sincerely, I really do, to all the generations before us we sincerely accept your apology, we appreciate that you are willing to let us rebuild the world that you f—ed up.”

You obviously are missing out on the significance of a chapter of American history here, Robert Muir.

If Douglas MacArthur had been left in charge in Korea, we likely would have been pushed into the sea, and the world that you live in today would be markedly different than what it is today.

That “Communist offensive” in Korea as you called it put Communist China on the map as an emerging world power, and it established Mao Tse Tung as a world leader.

Hardly a historical triviality, Robert Muir.

An army of yellow-skinned peasants from a poor, war-torn third-world country were almost able to push a technologically-superior superpower into the sea.

World history was changed overnight, Robert Muir.

I’m surprised that you trivialize it so.

If it wasn’t for Matthew Ridgeway, a paratroop general, being able to rally our retreating troops. many who were running from the advancing Chinese, the Chinese would have whipped us in Korea.

And the important point you miss, Robert Muir, is that we were never able to eject the Chinese from Korea.

That is why the war ended in an armistice, because it was a stalemate.

And while it is true that the Chinese did not invade the continental USA, the fact of the matter is that where the American flag is planted is considered U.S. territory and in 1950, the American flag was planted in Korea all the way up to the Yalu River between North Korea and Manchuria.

When the Chinese invaded, they invaded that American territory in Korea and took it away from us.

So that Communist offensive in Korea was not at all a far cry from “the coolies would have taken this country were it not for Vets,” and your suggesting otherwise is to trade in the kind of alternative facts that have become such a worrying element of our decaying democracy.

If you want to have an intelligent conversation, Robert Muir, you cannot resort to such nonsense.

As to the Chinese emerging from that conflict as a world-class military force, consider the battles of Pork Chop Hill in Korea, a pair of related Korean War infantry battles during the spring and summer of 1953 fought while the U.S. and the Communist Chinese and Koreans negotiated an armistice.

It took two years to negotiate that armistice, Robert Muir, and in all that time, thousands of American troops were on the line and dying in on-going battles with the Chinese.

That was of huge psychological significance to the yellow-skinned people of Asia, and it would have ramifications for us in Viet Nam, and it still has ramifications for the US today in Korea, so we are hardly talking about trivialities here, Robert Muir, as you would try to make us believe.

Getting back to the Pork Chop Hill battles, Robert Muir, in the U.S., they were controversial because of the many soldiers killed for terrain of no strategic or tactical value, although the Chinese lost many times the number of US soldiers killed and wounded.

Psychology, Robert Muir – unlike us, the Chinese have known of the psychological factor in battle for thousands of years.

By fighting as they did in Korea, Robert Muir, the Chinese, derided by MacArthur as “laundrymen” who could not fight, were able to greatly affect public opinion in this country.

Had our troops been pushed into the sea, or if they were forced to have to do a Dunkirk-type evacuation, what would that have done to our status on the world stage?

And an irony here that you probably don’t appreciate, Robert Muir, is that the Chinese were using our own infantry assault weapons that we had provided to Chiang Kai Shek in China against us.

Mao Tse Tung joked that the United States was his principal weapons supplier, which we were, and when Claire Chennault’s fliers would deliver weapons to Chiang Kai Shek that would soon end up in the hands of the Communists, they called them deliveries from “Uncle Chump from over the hump,” with the hump being the Himalayas.

Getting back to Pork Chop Hill, the United Nations, primarily supported by the United States, won the first battle when the Chinese broke contact and withdrew after two days of fighting.

The second battle involved many more troops on both sides and was bitterly contested for five days before United Nations Command conceded the hill to the Chinese forces by withdrawing behind the main battle line.

Do you see that word “conceded” there, Robert Muir?

Do you understand its significance?

Conceding is a form of throwing in the towel.

What a propaganda victory that was for the Communists, and if you know anything about the Communists, Robert Muir, you know that propaganda victories are very important for them, especially back then, when Communism was just getting its feet under itself.

So that forms the context I am coming from in here.

On both July 9 and July 10, 1953, the two sides attacked and counter-attacked with a large part of both Chinese divisions being committed to the battle, and ultimately five battalions of the 17th and 32nd Infantry Regiments were engaged, making nine counter-attacks over four days.

On the morning of July 11, the commander of the U.S. I Corps decided to abandon Pork Chop Hill to the Chinese and the 7th Division withdrew under fire.

Less than three weeks after the Battle of Pork Chop Hill, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed by the United Nations Command (Korea), Chinese People’s Liberation Army, and North Korean Peoples Army, ending the hostilities.

Note the Chinese sitting at the table there as a negotiating partner, Robert Muir.

They won that right by fighting our troops to a standstill on the battlefield.

But on the other hand, by our troops standing up to the Chinese, we denied them the whole of Korea.

So I respectfully submit, Robert Muir, that it is not myself who talking the nonsense in here, but because Korea is a forgotten part of our history, I can see how it would be that you wouldn’t understand that, and being magnanimous, I can accept that as an excuse to not see the point I was making above.

I am sure that you are not alone, either, but such it is, Robert Muir, until it changes.